drunk and disorderly

[George Thompson]

My father used to speak of someone being arrested for "drunk and disorderly"
-- indeed, he might have had the experience himself, in his youth in
Brooklyn, in the 1910s & 1920s.

I dare say that it is cop-talk: Your honor, I saw him coming down the
street, and he was drunk, and disorderly.

Searching a dozen or so of the Proquest files available to me, I see that
there are a number of appearances in the mid & late 1820s of phrases like
"he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the streets", all either
from English sources, or from an American source that is quoting an English
source.  The first home-grown appearance I notice is:
. . . Jerry Duggin, an old acquaintance, being placed at the bar before
Alderman Thorp as drunk and disorderly, Jerry, before the evidence could be
given against him [began bantering with the Judge].

*Atkinson's Saturday Evening Post (1831-1839); *Oct 22, 1831; Vol. X., Whole
No. 534.;

American Periodicals Series Online


There's no indication that this story is copied from another paper, but
looking it over, I'm a bit suspicious: there's a reference to "the officers
of the New Police", which sounds like an allusion to the Peelers, and Jerry
addresses the Judge as your Honor, but also as your Worship.  Your Honor was
the usual mode in NYC courts at this time, but I don't think I've
encountered "your Worship".  But maybe that was the usage in Philly.

In any event, I'm suspicious that this is copied from an English
publication, which either was uncredited, or the acknowledgement has been
cut out of the on-line version.

GAT

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 10:38 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> At 6/27/2011 08:16 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
>> this doesn't answer your question, but "drunk and disorderly" goes back a
>> while, at least to early 19th C. in England, if I recall.
>>
>
> In the OED, I find quotations from 1340, 1489, and 1585 (as well as
> 1830), but all as an adjectival phrase.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------**------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org